Xing Huang mortgaged his house to help raise money for the Chinese Canadian Heritage Centre.
“Gimme two beers,” says a middle-aged man, dressed sharply in a grey suit that matches his thinning hair. “I want one Canadian and one Chinese.” The Chinese bartender complies. He pops the caps off a Molson and a Tsingtao and hands the bottles across the counter.
The Chu Shing restaurant on Somerset Street West is packed and festive on this bitterly cold night. Red, orange and green balloons dot the room. Chinese music blasts from mounted loudspeakers. Local politicians rub shoulders with members and leaders of Ottawa’s Chinese community.
And in the middle of it all stands Xing Huang, director of the Chinese Canadian Heritage Centre, a non-profit community organization and cultural showcase. He’s put considerable time and resources into the project and hopes to see a substantial return from tonight’s banquet and fundraiser.
As new arrivals shed their overcoats and make their way inside, the soft-spoken Huang shakes hands tightly and offers warm greetings in Chinese and English. Nearly all the seats in Chu Shing’s massive dining hall are full – a visible sign of support for Huang’s efforts from the Ottawa-Chinese community. Just under a year ago, the centre was little more than a hopeful dream with little financial means to back it.
It’s come a long way.
Four days earlier, the sound of a buzz saw slicing wood reverberates throughout the old United Church on Kent Street, as volunteers make props for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebrations. Once an imposing stone bastion of Christianity, the building is now home to the heritage centre and has a decidedly more eastern feel. Concrete lions donated by the Chinese government guard the exterior, while inside, Chinese lanterns share wall space with stained glass portraits of Jesus.
“The mission of the centre is to be a bridge from East to West, from the past to the future,” says Huang. “This is a place where Chinese people meet Canadian people, and we enjoy the traditions of each.”
For visitors, these include activities such as Chinese painting, calligraphy and dancing. And a recently opened senior’s program gives several hundred Chinese-Canadian elders a chance to beef up their English and learn more about Canadian culture and institutions.
“We’re giving public recognition to important parts of our community,” says Michael Dagg, a centre board member. “There’s 40,000 Chinese in Ottawa, that makes them the third largest group, yet how often are they recognized?”
It’s a question Huang has taken to heart.
Now in his 60s, he first came to Ottawa from Beijing 20 years ago and took a job at the National Research Council, where he still works full time as an aerospace engineer.
Despite a modest demeanour, Huang has rapidly assumed a leading role in the Chinese community in recent years, first becoming president of the Chinese Community Association of Ottawa, and then publisher and editor of the Chinese Canadian Community News, a modest local publication with a circulation of 5,000.
When the United Church went up for sale last year, he jumped at the opportunity to set up a cultural centre inside the hulking stone edifice.
But some Chinese community leaders questioned his judgement. They argued that with limited financial means to support such an ambitious project, Huang’s vision was perhaps a bit more rose-coloured than pragmatic, says Dagg.
After all, the Kent Street location wasn’t cheap. A hefty $800,000 price tag meant a serious fiscal commitment, money Huang and his supporters didn’t have.
But the size and location were perfect and a community fundraising drive strengthened his resolve to push forward.
“It was sort of emotional,” he says. “Some Chinese seniors with low incomes donated several hundred dollars. That’s maybe the equivalent of a rich guy donating $10,000.”
Huang says he was particularly touched by a four-year-old boy who selflessly donated $130 of his birthday money.
“When I saw the community’s enthusiasm I said, ‘the only thing I can do is continue this project,’” he says.
Though the $150,000 collected in donations was an impressive show of grassroots zeal, financially speaking it had fallen far short of the mark. And when Huang sought a bank loan to make up the difference, he was dismayed to find the centre would have to deal with double-digit interest rates because it wasn’t an established community organization.
Determined not to let down those who had given so graciously, Huang mortgaged his own house to raise the badly needed money on more equitable terms.
“It’s a joke when I talk to my wife now,” laughs Huang. “I say, ‘it’s fine if we don’t have money, we’ll move to the centre.’”
Dagg is impressed that Huang’s wife shares her husband’s sense of humour.
“Try to imagine how most wives would have reacted if you dumped the family line of credit on a project like this,” he says. “Anyone else would’ve probably shot him. He’s extremely lucky his wife is so supportive.”
Acquiring the building was only half the battle. Essential but potentially costly fix-up work such as modifying the stage and retiling bathroom floors presented a serious challenge. Leading a small squadron of volunteers, Huang eschewed expensive contract labour and completed most of the arduous renovations himself.
Dagg remembers walking into the centre a week before its official opening last November to find Huang holding a jackhammer and blasting away at concrete with relative ease.
“The thing was too heavy for me to even lift,” says Dagg. “How many PhDs do you know who can handle home renovations in the same way they can handle a pencil?”
Huang and his team toiled away late into the evening most nights to make sure the centre sparkled and dazzled when it was opened to the public. And during it all he’d been running a community association, publishing a local newspaper and working full time as an aerospace engineer.
At the Chu Shing restaurant, performers from the Shaolin Kung Fu Centre don brightly coloured costumes as Judith Peralta, a member of the group, expresses her support for the centre.
“From what I’ve seen, the centre is definitely helpful in promoting Chinese culture in Ottawa,” she says.
Peralta’s group practices there once a week and regularly gives energetic performances at centre events. “There’s such a sense of warmth about the centre,” she says. “And it’s interesting to see two cultures meeting in that western church.”
Half an hour later, her extravagantly dressed peers hop, gyrate and gallivant in front of a delighted crowd as loud booms echo from a mammoth Chinese drum behind them. Huang watches from his table at the front, his view a swirl of blinding colours and undulating limbs.
For the time being, he intends to stick with the centre until the fledgling organization gains a more solid footing in the Ottawa Chinese community, both as a reputable cultural venue and financially secure operation.
Though he’ll soon be stepping down as head of the Chinese Community Association, Huang still plans to pursue his research career and operate his community newspaper. By his own account, he works eight days a week and gets on average six hours of sleep a night. Some of his friends think he’s crazy for pushing himself so hard at his age but he disagrees.
“This centre, this newspaper, these don’t belong to me, they belong to the community, so they cannot fail.”